Friday, 30 January 2015

Since the beginning of January, I have started to work on
the main collections at LHSA. Although the Wellcome Trust project to conserve
the HIV/AIDS collections is almost complete, my contract has been extended until June,
so you will be hearing more of tales from the conservation studio over the next
few months! During this time, I will be carrying out a range of conservation treatments
such as consolidation and repair of bound volumes, surface cleaning and tear
repair of flat sheet material, cold storage of x-rays, as well as supervising
volunteers and interns working on architectural plans. I am really looking
forward to the challenges that working with such a wide range of materials will
bring.

For this blog post, I thought I would focus on what I have
been working on for the past few weeks; the conservation of bound volumes. A
common problem for books in the LHSA collections is the occurrence of red rot.
For those of you who don’t work in a library, red rot is a degradation process
found on leather bound books. It is characterised by a powdery layer on the
surface of the book which, as archivists know, gets absolutely everywhere.It is also associated with the weakening of
the material, so along with red rot, you often find torn leather and abraded
edges.

Example of red rot found on books

Damage caused by red rot is irreversible. However, the spread of red rot
can be retarded by treating the leather with a consolidant such as Klucel G in
Industrial Methylated Spirit (IMS). First a museum vac with a low suction is
used to remove the loose powdery material from the book. Then, a 2% solution is
brushed on to areas affected by red rot and left to dry. Although this consolidates
the powdery material, it doesn’t cure the leather of red rot, it will just
prolong its life for longer. A slight darkening of the leather is sometimes caused by
application of Klucel G, so often test areas are carried out prior to full
application. Although discolouration of the leather is not ideal, it is sometimes
better than doing nothing at all and allowing further damage to be caused to the book
due to red rot.
﻿﻿﻿﻿

Using a Museum Vac to remove powdery material

Using a brush to apply a 2% solution of Klucel G in IMS

In some full leather bound books, red rot can cover the
whole surface. In these cases, I decided not to consolidate the volume as it is
difficult to get an even coverage over the whole book without causing
streaking. Instead, with the help of volunteers Collette and Alice, I made book
covers to protect these books. We made these from 650gsm boxboard tied with
cotton tape. This allows for covers to be made without the use of adhesives,
which speeds up the construction of the covers and ensures that the book is not
affected by any potential off-gassing from the adhesive. These covers not only
contain all the red rot and stop it spreading, but also protect the books
whilst they are on the shelf. Often damage is caused on the shelf as adjacent
books can be scraped by the corners of the volumes being removed and replaced,
resulting in tearing of the leather.

A full leather book rehoused in a book cover

Example of book with torn and delaminated leather

Another common problem in the LHSA collection is the
detachment of boards and spines from bound volumes. This is usually found in
books that are consulted frequently as the opening and closing actions causes
these areas to weaken. To fix this, I used a couple of repair techniques taught
to me by private book conservator, Caroline Scharfenberg, who also works at
Edinburgh University. To secure loose and detached boards, I used a strip of
fairly thick Japanese paper adhered to the inner spine joint with wheat starch
paste. Although further work can be done, this provides a surprisingly strong
repair and is suitable for the needs of the collection. If a spine has become
detached, a new hollow can be made from archival paper to reattach it. A hollow
is essentially a piece of paper that has been folded twice and glued together
to create a tube. This is then affixed to the spine and the original cover
material is glued to the hollow. When the book is opened, the hollow also opens
allowing the spine to move naturally. These basic repair techniques will extend
the life of the bound volumes significantly and prevent further damage
occurring.

Book, before treatment with a detached spine

Book, after treatment with spine reattached using a hollow

The conservation of books is very different to the
conservation of flat archival material that I am used to working with.Although techniques are similar, the
composite and 3D nature of the book provides new challenges to me as a paper
conservator. I hope to learn more book repair techniques in the future.

Friday, 23 January 2015

This week’s blog features two examples of Fortune
magazine (LHB39/8/11-12) from the 1950s, an occasional publication by
East Fortune Hospital in Drem, East Lothian. The hospital was founded on the site of a
former World War One naval airship station in 1922 and was used as a
tuberculosis sanatorium and then later to look after children and adults with learning difficulties as the numbers of tuberculosis patients declined in the
late 1950s. It finally closed in 1997.

The magazines claim to be for patients and the local
community and each contains a substantial collection of articles, poetry and
letters by staff and patients. Patients being treated for tuberculosis would
often spend long periods resting in bed in reasonable health and would be
grateful of something interesting to read. Typical article subjects include
trips abroad and war stories. The 1955 issue includes a double-page spread of
caricatures of the hospital staff!

Hospital staff from the 1955 edition (LHB39/8/11)

Both magazines feature striking screen printed colour
covers. The one from 1955 is of the Bass Rock, a well-known landmark and bird
sanctuary which can be seen along the coastline of East Lothian and Fife and is
by Jemima Rennie.

Cover of the 1955 edition (LHB39/8/11)

The 1957 cover by George Millar features a glum looking
individual with a walking stick and hunched posture entering what probably represents
one of the huts which made up East Fortune Hospital in the upper picture.

Cover of the 1957 edition (LHB39/8/12)

In
the lower section, the same man is seen striding out of the hospital relieved
of his infirmities. Although tuberculosis is often thought of as a lung disease
it can also affect the bones and in particular the spine. The picture shows the
level of confidence the hospital staff had that some of their patients could be
fully restored and become productive members of society again. As the Countess
of Haddington wishes readers in the 1955 foreword, ‘good fortune and health in
the years to come’.

Friday, 16 January 2015

“On Monday 19th January, I’m off to talk to the
Scottish Genealogy Society about the history of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital (REH).
As with most archivists, outreach is a key part of my core work, and LHSA has worked with
everyone from P7 schoolchildren to university students and retired NHS staff.
Talks like these are not only a chance to introduce the uninitiated to archives
and what you can find there, but are also a chance to introduce seasoned
researchers (like the Scottish Genealogy Society!) to what LHSA can offer family
historians.

My talk on Monday will combine a history of the REH (which has recently celebrated its bicentenary) with a guide
to what researchers can learn from our collections from the institution.
Despite not being the largest of our hospital collections (our Royal Infirmary
of Edinburgh papers have that distinction!), LHB7 (for the REH) is the one that is consulted most often - by academic researchers and
genealogists alike. In addition to the fascinating history of psychiatry that
all asylum collections can convey, I think that one of the reasons for the
popularity of our REH records is that they recorded information so thoroughly – I’m sure that many of the medical and administrative staff
would have made admirable archivists!

Last year, 230 out of a total of 938 enquiries came from
family historians – just under one quarter of the whole, which is quite a small
number compared to many other archives. However, if you do find out that your
relative was in hospital, health records can offer a great deal of biographical information
to family historians. The REH collection is a case in
point – and the excellent record-keeping skills of the institution means that I can often trace
a patient from certification (compulsory admittance to the hospital, saying why
the admission was thought necessary) to admission, case history, and finally
discharge or (for the unlucky ones) death. Most of our family history enquiries
about the Royal Edinburgh Hospital come to us after research of death and
census records has led people to find that a relative has either died or was
recorded as living in the REH (earlier known as the Royal
Edinburgh Asylum).

Sketch of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1808 (LHB7/57/1d)

Of all our REH records, the 121 case
books that we hold from 1840 to 1932 are an invaluable resource for anyone wanting
to delve deeper into personal or medical histories in a fascinating period of
advancements in psychiatric care. Case records such as these come with caveats,
of course – they only record what the physician and / or clerk thought to be
relevant, many are governed by a printed pro-forma layout which determined how
patients were described (and how much room there was to do that in), and notes
on the progress of patients can be at times frustratingly short (for example,
simply recording no change in condition, or whether the patient had lost or
gained weight). Nevertheless, the detail that they offer is matched by few of
our collections prior to the introduction of folder-based case notes. I can
also be sure of finding a record for each patient in the hospital if they were
resident in the period that case books were in active use. A further advantage
is that they are indexed, meaning that the researcher (in a lot of cases, me!)
can find an individual fairly quickly if no precise date of admission is known.

For the family historian, the case books not only contain
biographical detail (such as the originating address, age and occupation of the
patient), but also can tell you whether the patient paid fees, giving a hint of
their financial circumstances. Fees were paid by patients across the hospital - East House (which was later demolished to make way for Craighouse, which
opened in 1894) as well as in West House, which also took pauper patients. There
were different levels of fees in each house – if your relative was in
East House, you could assume that s/he (or the family) was reasonably well
off, with fees costing up to £200 per annum in the late 1870s, compared to an intermediate rate of £45 for patients residing in West House.

Reading case histories of ancestors in the REH can also lead researchers to new lines of enquiry. Not only were
patients sometimes discharged to other institutions (leading their descendants
in turn to new archives), but the clerk was required to record whether any
hereditary history of mental illness was known, which can bring new histories
to light. Reading these histories can be upsetting, no doubt, but they can also
be compelling, and while some researchers can become upset that their relative
was institutionalised, others have been impressed by the concern and
care that was expressed in the case history, far beyond what they had been led to
expect by the forbidding reputation of the ‘Victorian asylum.’ It’s also
comforting to remember that these histories were written at a very different
time, and that it is misleading to superimpose our current expectations of the
treatment, definition and understanding of mental illness upon the past. However,
what we can do is try to understand that past a little more, which is what
academics, genealogists and archivists are all striving to do.”

Friday, 9 January 2015

2014 was a great year for LHSA – we recapped some of our
highlights in our last blog before the Christmas break, ranging from completing
major pieces of work and ongoing developments with our projects and internships,
to new and exciting outreach and engagement and our recent Accredited Archive
Status.

Having looked back, it’s now time for us to look forward
to what the next 12 months have in store for the team.

Of course our enquiries work continues to be a top
priority for us; we saw a 10% increase in demand for our user services in 2014
so we will carry on helping to answer those research questions and meet the requests
for access to LHSA material! But there will be a major change in this area.
Laura, who has been with LHSA since 2007, has resigned as Archivist and Louise (who
has been working as the Archivist since March last year when Laura went on a
period of leave) will take over. We’re very sad to see Laura go, but she has
exciting plans in Munich, where she has been for the last 10 months or so. We
wish Laura all the very best and warmly welcome Louise to her new role, which
will begin officially on 1 March.

Our other core business will continue as usual, including
bringing in material to the Archive (we already have our first accession of the new year!),
cataloguing, and conservation/preservation. In the case of the latter, we’ll be
seeing more of our bound volumes and loose sheet material treated to make sure
they are available for research now and in the future. Our established programme
for volunteers, students on placement and internships will also be developed in
the coming months. This means that important, supervised, work to catalogue, conserve
and promote our collections can be carried out while, at the same time, we’re
able to offer valuable experience to those wishing to pursue careers in our
sector. We already have one new volunteer and in a few months we’ll be starting
some new outreach work with a John Lewis Golden Jubilee Trust award holder.

We’ll also be doing some exciting work on our Wellcome
Trust funded projects. Clair joins us to complete the cataloguing of our
HIV/AIDS collections, and Emily will be leading some new public engagement work,
including the development of educational resources, with those collections. Our
case note cataloguing work will carry on with the Norman Dott collections, and
be joined by new work on our case notes that relate to TB and diseases of the
chest.

The team are looking forward to the 2015 programme of
outreach work within hospitals, and with staff from NHS Lothian and healthcare
charities. This is something we do every year but it’s always different
depending on the activities we’re getting involved with or the interests of the
people with whom we’re collaborating. We’ll be helping to commemorate the 25th
anniversary of St John’s Hospital and working with NHS Lothian colleagues to
create new art installations drawing on archive material. We’ll also be
offering talks and presentations to a wide variety of interest groups from the
Scottish Genealogy Society to visitors to Edinburgh Central Library. The Central Library talk, open to all, will be on the 22nd of April at 2.30pm, looking at tracing patient experiences
in the nineteenth century. You can book your free place here: http://bit.ly/1xKHAp9!

And, of course, we will continue to support the
University’s teaching programme with both our collections and our own areas of
expertise. Our contribution to the regular undergraduate History in Practice sessions and the postgraduate module for the MSc History of the Book will be
accompanied by our work with Widening Participation (for more information about this please
see our recent ‘Broadsheet’ article at http://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/broadsheet/issue31education.pdf),
and events within Innovative Learning Week in February and the Festival of Museums
in May.

We've already got a lot planned for the year ahead - we'll be kept busy building on our successes of
last year. Watch this space for updates on all this work, and new developments
as the year progresses!

Lothian Health Services Archive holds the historically important local records of NHS hospitals and other health-related material.
We collect, preserve and catalogue these records and promote them to increase understanding of the history of health and for the benefit of all.

Use of images from LHSA collections

We can provide images from items in our collections, subject to various conditions. Images are provided for private study or non-commercial research, and cannot be used for other purposes unless you request and receive written permission from LHSA to do so.

If you wish to use any images that have been featured on this blog, please contact us at lhsa@ed.ac.uk and we will be happy to discuss permissions with you.